Scottish Racism

Racist murders are more common in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, according to a shock academic study into the extent of prejudice.

A new book insists the belief Scotland is immune to racism and “culturally different” to England is condemned as a “misleading fantasy”. The authors of No Problem Here: Understanding Racism in Scotland cite official crime figures to prove there is a very real problem.

The analysis shows the rate of racist murders is higher on average in Scotland than in the UK as a whole. Between 2000 and 2013, there were 1.8 murders per million people with a known or suspected race element in Scotland. The equivalent figure for the UK was just 1.3 murders per million people.

Carol Young, senior policy officer for the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, said the stats show the idea that Scotland doesn’t have a problem with racism is false.  “There’s a perception that Scotland has less of a problem with racism than other areas of the UK, perhaps best summed up by the phrase, ‘we’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns’.But, regardless of popular opinion, the statistics suggest otherwise. In 2013-2014, 4807 racist incidents were recorded by police in Scotland. That’s equivalent of 92 incidents every week, without accounting for the many cases that go unreported.” Young added: “You could be white-skinned and still identifiably minority ethnic in many circumstances. Skin tone has not protected Jewish people, Irish people, Gypsy/traveller communities or new European migrants from racism.”

Neil Davidson, a sociology lecturer at Glasgow University said: “The idea that there is ‘no problem’, or at least much less of a problem, has grown for three reasons. One is that the Irish-Catholic presence – the largest-ever migrant group to settle in Scotland – tends to be discussed in the context of ‘sectarianism’, a concept which treats Catholics and Protestants as equivalent and ignore the racism directed towards the former. The second is the relatively small size of the migration to Scotland from the Indian sub-continent and especially from the Caribbean, which did not mean that migrants did not suffer racism, just that it was much less visible than in Birmingham or London.

“Finally, the movements for devolution and independence have involved the idea that Scotland is ‘culturally’ different from England, and that part of this difference involves the Scots being more ‘welcoming’, ‘tolerant’ and so on...these are misleading fantasies, which ignore the historical experience of Irish Catholics and the contemporary experience of Muslims, Roma and other BAME groups...'